Finally!

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Though skin pigmentation is irrelevant per se, HDAS suggests (and I
>believe) that "to fuck over X"
>
>   a. was indeed the original form in the sense in question,
>
>   b. has been vastly more prevalent among speakers of AAVE - so
> much so as to sugget the idiom's origin there,
>
>   c. was not much used in white speech before the mid '70s,
>
>   d. still sounds rhythmically or positionally "wrong" to me as a
> speaker of WAVE.
>
>   Earliest HDAS ex. is from 1961, but the context suggests it was
> around for a while.
>
>   The form "fuck X over" undoubtedly owes something to "work X
> over."  I believe this is becoming the general form.

So "f*ck over X" was originally parallel to "lord over X" [I believe
this is now more commonly "lord it over X"?] rather than parallel to
"work over X"?

Then one might speculate that the origin of "f*ck over" might have
involved "lord over" (and not "work over"). Especially if the
original sense was more like "disrespect" rather than like "damage".

Just woolgathering.

-- Doug Wilson


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